Embattled Heckler Gets Offer Of Ambassador Post

October 01, 1985|By George de Lama, Chicago Tribune.

WASHINGTON — President Reagan ended weeks of speculation Monday by offering Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler the post of ambassador to Ireland, but the embattled Cabinet member said she would need a few days to think it over.

Heckler met with Reagan in the Oval Office for nearly an hour in a last-ditch effort to save her Cabinet job, but instead she heard the President offer her the diplomatic position.

An apparently distressed Heckler ducked a huge crowd of reporters waiting for her outside the White House and departed without comment, but White House spokesman Larry Speakes said Reagan had been prepared to accept her resignation at the meeting.

Speakes said Heckler ``has asked for a few days to consider`` the offer, which she already has publicly said she did not want. She is to remain secretary of health and human services during that time.

John Svahn, chief White House domestic policy adviser, was among the candidates under consideration to succeed her in the Cabinet post, White House sources said, but Speakes said no list of potential successors has been compiled.

Reagan praised Heckler for making a ``valuable contribution`` at the department but said she could make an ``excellent contribution`` in Ireland because of her Irish background and political experience, Speakes said.

Speakes denied Reagan was displeased with Heckler`s performance and even said the President sees the move from her $82,000-a-year Cabinet post, with its control over a $300 billion-plus budget, to the $70,000 ambassador`s job as ``a promotion.``

Earlier, an angry Reagan chastised reporters for what he termed

``inaccurate`` reports that Heckler would be fired from the Cabinet--but then he admitted he might ``want to talk to her about another job.``

Asked if he was going to fire Heckler, Reagan said: ``I don`t know where these reports are coming from. They`re not true.``

Despite the public portrayal of Monday`s developments, Heckler`s long-rumored ouster represents a political victory for White House chief of staff Donald Regan.

Regan and other conservatives within the administration have made no secret of their disdain for Heckler`s high-profile style and what they regarded as widespread mismanagement in her department.

Some White House conservatives, reportedly including communications director Patrick Buchanan, have also complained that Heckler was not sufficiently committed to ``true-blue`` conservative causes.

Hoping to head off the sniping, Heckler had mounted her own campaign to save her job, enlisting congressional supporters and insisting on making her case before the President.

Just last week, before requesting the face-to-face meeting with Reagan, Heckler made it clear that she intended to stay at Health and Human Services. Heckler, 54, a lawyer and former congresswoman, was named to head the department on Jan. 12, 1983, after she lost a re-election bid the previous fall for a ninth term as a representative from Massachusetts.

She first angered some leading conservatives at the Republican National Convention in 1980, when she led an unsuccessful fight to persuade the party to endorse the Equal Rights Amendment.

As head of Health and Human Services, the mammoth department that oversees Social Security and other large government social programs, Heckler publicly defended budget cuts in many of the same programs she had backed while in Congress.